The Associated Press is reporting that a Nigerian national has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and grand theft in a case involving an identity theft ring that obtained consumer data from provider ChoicePoint.

From the article –

Olatunji Oluwatosin, 42, of North Hollywood, Calif., was indicted by a grand jury in August on 22 counts of identity theft, conspiracy, grand theft and credit card fraud.

Oluwatosin pleaded guilty on Tuesday and is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 10.

At the time of his indictment, prosecutors said the scheme cost at least $4 million in damages and involved 16 victims and five banks or credit card companies.

You can read the full AP article @ Nigerian pleads guilty in ChoicePoint case

Wired.com has published a short, informative article on employee and worker privacy rights in the workplace.

From the article -

If you have internet access at work, there’s a very good chance your employer has a system in place to monitor your online activities. So, if you’re concerned about privacy, take heed. Under current U.S. law, there’s little you can do to protect the confidentiality of your internet use on the job.

You can read the entire article by Joanna Glasner on Wired.com @ Worker Privacy: You Have None.

A Dec. 7th article on wired.com by Jennifer Granick discusses some issues that we have discussed in previous posts on this blog, regarding the new Riya facial recognition software; photo tagging and search engines potentially indexing personal online pictures and making them searchable by a person’s name.

From the Wired article -

The service currently only searches photos uploaded to its servers. The technology could, however, be deployed across the internet, allowing people to search the web, Flickr, Tribe and Friendster photo sets, regardless of whether the owner or the person photographed wants to be identified. That’s where things get interesting.

Mothers could search MySpace.com and find pictures of their children at a party when they were supposed to be studying at a friend’s house. Insurers could search and find a photo of a customer bungee-jumping, and raise the daredevil’s premiums. I predict that the tool will be invaluable to former (and future) boyfriends and girlfriends checking up on lovers.

It certainly is fast becoming a brave new virtual world.

You can read the entire article by Jennifer Granick on wired.com @ Face It: Privacy is Endangered

With the rapidly increasing popularity of online social networks like MySpace, Friendster and FaceBook, along with the recent trouble that some college students and others have gotten into for their online communications on some of these sites, it is time to stop and review some excellent tips for protecting your privacy and keeping your online “paper trail” to a minimum.

The North Lake Tahoe Bonanza has published an in-depth article for doing just that.

From the article -

Let’s take a minute to talk about online safety. The Internet is a great place to chat, do research, and have fun. Despite all its usefulness though, it does have its “dark” side. Knowing what and what not to do online can save you a lot of grief!

You can read the entire article at Safety Tips For Using Online Social Networks

There is an informative article on Wired News about spyware.  Spyware is considered malicious software ( malware ) that can do numerous things from delivering targeted pop up ads to recording web search and surfing habits of users, including recording keystrokes, passwords and credit card numbers of PC owners. 

The article details the problems that individuals and businesses face when PC’s are infected with spyware; how to detect a spyware intrusion and ways of dealing with the spyware problem. 

Business managers should educate themselves on the security threats that spyware poses for their operations and work to educate their employees on the threat, especially in departments where any significant amount of work is done online.

You can read the entire article at Spyware: What You Need to Know by Kim Zetter @ wired.com.

Keystroke logger of the worst kind: a microphone by ZDNet’s David Berlind — Just when you thought anti-spyware technology was making it safe to compute again, researchers at the University of California have come up with a new form of spyware using some old technology: a microphone.  According to a story on ScientificAmerican.com, with 88 percent accuracy (after certain algorithms were applied), the researchers "successfully decoded what was [...]

Carlos Enrique Perez-Malara, the creator of the infamous spyware program "Loverspy", has been indicted for allegedly breaking US federal computer privacy laws and is apparently hiding from federal law enforcement officials.  The "Loverspy" spyware was created for people to spy on the internet activities of lovers and spouses. 

Four people who purchased and used the spyware program have been indicted as well.  If convicted, Perez-Malara faces 175 years in prison and upwards of $8.75 million USD in fines.  You can read more details at ‘Loverspy’ program creator indicted, on the run by China Martens @ computerworld.co.nz .

Here is an interesting identity theft article on how a hospital worker stole a dying patient’s identity to make almost $12,000 in purchases:  Dying man’s credit stolen by Carl Mario Nudi @ heraldtoday.com